What the Trail Reveals When You Stop Looking at the View
Some of the most important things hiking has taught me have had nothing to do with distance, elevation or gear.
They have come from the harder moments. The summit that took an hour when it should have taken twenty minutes. The pass where I wanted to quit. The spur where I turned to Julie and said I couldn’t go on. The flight home where a magazine article changed everything.
These essays are where I write about that version of hiking. Not the highlight reel, but the interior experience, what happens when the trail becomes a mirror, when the body refuses to cooperate, when the mountains ask something of you that fitness alone can’t answer.
If you have ever stood on a trail and felt something shift, not in your legs but somewhere deeper, these pieces are for you.
The Agreement Between Me and My Body
Read more →Two Graves’ Disease diagnoses, a decade apart, reshape an understanding of trust between body and trail across mountains on three continents.
Why well-prepared hikers still get caught out
Read more →Traces how a carefully researched High Country ridge hike still unravelled once dense post-bushfire regrowth slowed pace far below plan.
The Version of Hiking We Rarely Show
Read more →Behind the polished hiking photos are exhaustion, tears and frustration, the unfiltered moments that rarely make it online.
How the Andes Humbled Me: A Trek That Got in My Head
Read more →A high-altitude trek in Peru’s Cordillera Huayhuash exposes the gap between physical readiness and genuine mental preparation.
The Allure of Long-Distance Trails: Finding Solace in the Wild
Read more →Long-distance trails offer solace and perspective, built through depression recovery, group hikes gone wrong and hard-earned summits.
Why I prepare: it was never just about me
Read more →A search and rescue injury reshapes an understanding of hiking preparation as a responsibility owed to others, not just oneself.
